Scott fiddled with the strap on his bag, looking fraught, like he wanted to say something else. All kinds of possibilities crashed through Charles’s mind. A confession about this kid that died. An indication of what he knew about Bronwyn and their father. Maybe he wanted to surge at Charles, hitting him again for what Charles had said years ago. Because even if Bronwyn was right, even if it didn’t change him, what Charles said was still the worst thing Charles had ever said to anyone, the worst thing he had ever done.
Charles glanced at the garden, where the old rose trellises had once been, the ones Scott had burned down. As Scott struck the match, he’d looked at Charles with such authority and confidence. He didn’t care who his adoptive parents were or what their legacy was. He was in control of his destiny, freer and richer than Charles had ever been.
“Joanna,” Scott said. He spun the key around his finger. “Don’t fuck that up, man. Okay?”
“Okay …” Charles sounded out, baffled.
Scott nodded, seemingly satisfied, and walked to his car, opened his passenger door, and threw his bag inside. “Well, I’m off,” he said.
“Off where?”
Scott just grinned. He walked around the car and got in the driver’s seat. The car growled to life, the stereo’s thunderous bass buzzing.
“Wait,” Charles called just as his brother began to back up.
Scott braked, turned down the stereo, and stuck his head out the window.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said.
“For what?”
There was a lump the size of a golf ball in Charles’s throat, a spicy taste on his tongue. “For … the poles,” he managed to say. “For blocking your way.”
Scott’s expression wavered for a moment, as if he’d decoded what Charles really meant. As if they were, for at least a moment, really brothers. “You’re cool,” he said.
And then he turned up the music again and rolled up the window. The headlights snapped on. Charles shaded his eyes, watching as Scott slung one arm over the back of the passenger seat and maneuvered the wheel so that the car pivoted down the driveway. He backed out the whole way down, navigating the curves through the back window, something Charles had never been able to do. And then he was gone.
Charles stood still for a few minutes, his ear cocked. Scott’s engine growled and sputtered the whole way down the road, and Charles was certain he could still hear it even a few miles away. The sound felt imprinted inside him, the same way a bright orange shimmer lingered on his corneas after staring too long at the sun.
Then he turned back to work on the tent. When it finally stood, he stepped back. There it was, a big yellow teepee with a flap for an entrance. He had built it. The wind blew; the tent fluttered but didn’t fall.
He ducked down and climbed through the small opening. Once inside, he zipped up the flap, closing himself in. Everything in here looked yellow, from his skin to his fingernails to the face of his watch. He could hear traffic on the street down the hill. When he moved, the mesh beneath him swished. There was a tiny flap in the ceiling that could be unzipped, probably for stargazing. He lay back, putting his arms behind his head, feeling the brittle grass through the thin subfloor. When he looked into the corner, he saw something written on the canvas. J.M. James McAllister. His father liked to put his initials on everything.
A sob welled up inside him, coming from somewhere very deep. It got stuck in his throat and then burst out his nose. He turned his head to the side and shook.
He sobbed for a while until he wasn’t even sure anymore what he was crying about. He was simply too exhausted to keep this up anymore, to pretend that things were fine. Realizing this made him feel fresh, like he’d just stepped out of a shower. There. He was still breathing. His heart was still pumping. The world hadn’t ended just because he’d admitted that he wasn’t fine, he wasn’t fine at all.
He raised his head, realizing something about what Bronwyn had said. Scott had seen their father and Bronwyn hugging a week or so before the banquet, and he’d assumed the worst. At the party, Scott stopped at their table, but Bronwyn went inside first, presumably to talk to his father and explain that they couldn’t be friends anymore. Scott followed—why? To intervene?—but Charles interrupted him, venting years of frustration. Scott took Charles’s abuse, but for a moment, Charles remembered his brother’s eyes dimming, noticing something behind them. All this time, Charles hadn’t known what he was looking at, but Scott had seen them, his father and Bronwyn.
Instead of letting it play out, instead of letting Charles see, Scott had tackled Charles, diverting his attention. Maybe he didn’t want Charles’s opinion of his father ruined forever. Maybe Scott wanted to protect their father, or Charles, or even their mother, by creating a subterfuge. What if it hadn’t been some random act of violence but a noble gesture, a protective measure?
“No,” Charles said out loud, his voice hollow and loud inside the little tent. That was bullshit. He didn’t want to consider that Scott was actually … perceptive. It was so much more satisfying to dwell on Scott jumping him, throwing him to the ground in revenge.